Ethiopians All Over

Sunday, December 2, 2018

University of Cincinnati senior Megdelawit Habteselassie also finds time to serve as student body president and as a member of the UC alumni council. She is the first African-American woman to hold the position in UC's 199-year history. She will graduate this year and plans to move to Washington, D.C., to work for a few years before going to law school.

Alem Tesema has now been offered alternative accommodation in a new part of the country. However, the area that has been offered to Alem Tesema isn't close to the Ethiopian community and in an area he knows to be unsafe. He is still receiving physiotherapy and experiences pain in the shoulder he was shot. He has been unable to find an alternative job and has been waiting to be relocated since applying earlier this year.

Monday, November 26, 2018

Petrose, of Laurel, Maryland, earned her degrees in neuroscience and economics from Pitt in 2017. She was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and immigrated to the United States when she was 12. In a release from the university, Honors College Dean Brian Primack said he was "absolutely thrilled for Lia."

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Ermyias Shiberou grew up halfway across the world in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Today, he is the owner of Blue Nile Ethiopian Kitchen restaurant and Stickem food truck. This friendly chef and restaurateur always has a smile on his face and is the most welcoming of hosts. His is a story that will move you. He originally came to Memphis out of necessity. When he was just 15 years old, his parents sent him to Memphis to live with a family friend. He came here all on his own.

Monday, August 6, 2018

Ahmed was 9 when she came to America. She spent most of her childhood growing up in Tennessee and spent a little time in New York between elementary school and high school. Ahmed’s father is the only one in her family, until now, who attended a form of higher education, through a local community college. Ahmed will be the first to attend a four-year college, an achievement by itself, with her entire first year covered by scholarships and grants. For a year at Lawrence University between tuition, fees, room and board, an estimated total of $57,816 is needed to send a single student to college.

However, Ahmed received the 2018-19 Gift Aid of $51,270, a combination of grants and scholarships through Lawrence University and Federal Pell, not to mention through federal funding. This is on top of the $16,000 Wallin Scholarship.

Naol Benti, 27, was working at Mercy Place in Parkville, Melbourne, when he robbed Mary Purcell in December last year.

The registered nurse drained his victim’s accounts, making almost daily purchases ranging from food at a local café and Domino’s pizza, to more expensive items such as a diamante watch and camera bag from JB Hi-Fi.

Monday, July 9, 2018

A first-generation American born to an Ethiopian father and mixed-heritage Jamaican mother, Tesfaye puts her multidisciplinary approach to work in The Water Will Carry Us Home. Tesfaye grew up in Milwaukee and New York. She studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and the Mahidol University International College in Bangkok, Thailand, before earning her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She also has been an artist in residence at the Tholpavakoothu Puppetry Theatre in Kerala, India. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and shows in London, Dublin, Chicago, New York and Thailand.

Saturday, June 30, 2018

Hinika came to the United States at the age of 16. He studied at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine and has been the chief of trauma and general surgery at CHMC since 2004.

He founded the organization Ethiopia Health Aid in 2007 after seeing hundreds of people in Oromia die from easily preventable diseases or conditions that could be treated with proper equipment and training. In 2006, 280 children in the area died from dehydration, Hinika said.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Outside of the classroom at St. Anselm’s Geda has been a member of the school’s track and soccer teams. He was also a member of Cultural Student Organization, which he said “is a club that tries to promote social, political, cultural, and racial dialogue and awareness on our school campus.”

Geda also took part in the Telluride Association Sophomore Seminar (TASS). The seminar invites less than 100 rising junior high school students each year to participate in a six-week college level course on black and ethnic studies topics. The program is designed to spur interest in the history, culture and politics of people of African descent. The program is held at Cornell University and the University of Michigan.

This is the third evolution of Medhane’s business, which began as a small market in 2005. After it morphed into a butcher shop in 2012, customers began to request that Medhane also cook the meat for them, then maybe some vegetables to go with it. She was game, but says it was essential that she start the restaurant with spices from her home country.

Her late father worked in the spice business while she was growing up in Ethiopia. When famine and civil war ravaged the country, he sent her to live in Seattle. The teenager, who spoke little English when she arrived in 1986, lived with an older brother, attended Garfield High School and worked at McDonald’s to pay for her prom dress. In 2014, she returned to Ethiopia, where a few siblings and her mother still live, acquired the spices and returned to open her restaurant.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Getachew wants to become a cardiovascular surgeon since he had a childhood friend with heart problems who couldn’t afford medical care. He hopes to work with Doctors Without Borders to give back to communities in need. As part of his Corporate Work Study Program job through De La Salle North Catholic, he works at Oregon Health and Science University and had the opportunity to shadow a cardiovascular surgeon. Getachew said it was eye-opening and inspiring.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Yadel has won a place on the acting foundation course at Rose Bruford College worth £8,250. Its intensive, full-time, 20-week course in acting delivers a rigorous and in-depth foundation training. From 375 applications online, there have already been 130 auditions for the foundation acting course this year, with more auditions to take place throughout the year.

Sunday, June 3, 2018

´I had already trained with Novak (Djokovic) in Miami when I was 16 years old, but my biggest experience was one week in Switzerland invited by Roger Federer, when I was 19. He is an unbelievable person, we spoke each other a lot, he told me that I never gave up and his key suggestion was to listen at my parents, I still remember how he said: "Listen, parents, they always want the best for you".

Sionna Brenn has had a tough life, but she has relied on hard work and strong faith to make the most of it.

Brenn, a senior at Willowridge High School in Pearland, Texas, was adopted from Ethiopia by an American family. This sounds like a good thing, but unfortunately, her adoptive family didn’t treat her well.

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

With no real value beyond stuffing a few pillows, most of the leftover feathers are burned or dumped in landfill sites, where they pose a potential biological hazard because of blood and tissue residue.

Tamrat Tesfaye, an Ethiopian-born scientist based in the South African port city of Durban, asked himself: "What a terrible waste. Why can't we turn them into something much more valuable?"

Friday, March 23, 2018

“It’s kind of different for me,” said Abebaw, who came to District 191 from Ethiopia when she was 9. “Even though a lot of my friends are people of color, a lot of people in my classes aren’t, because I take higher-level courses like honors and AP. There’s barely any diversity in there, and I’m often the only black person in those classes. So it was very hard for me to be able to express myself in those classes, because even though I was interested in the subjects, I didn’t really feel like I connected with the students.”

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Oakland Tech sophomore class president Samuel Getachew, 15, wrote a poem about guns and racism, which he recited on Wednesday morning to cheers on the steps of his school during the March For Our lives protest.

It's title is "Arms" and the last, and arguably most powerful, line is "when did America fall so in love with the sound of gunshots that she wanted to hear them on her birthday?"

Friday, March 16, 2018

When Kelela heard that a muralist had recently painted her face onto a brick wall mere footsteps away from the glow of Washington’s historic Howard Theatre, the Washington-area native went to see it. Then she wept. “It makes me feel a sense of belonging,” the singer says, an entire spectrum of emotions flooding into her voice. “If a weird black girl like me — a second-generation Ethiopian — can be on a wall, it means everybody can.”

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Hype Cafe is from engaged couple Samuel Mengistu, who is from Ethiopia, and Hanna Tesfamikael, who is from Eritrea but grew up in Ethiopia. "I came up with the name," Tesfamikael says. "You drink coffee in order to get energy. You get hyper. Let’s just call it hype."

At their coffee shop in the former Il Capo di Capitol Hill space, the owners will bring traditions from home to D.C., including coffee ceremonies on Saturdays and Sundays.

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

I found out she was found in her car in a gym parking lot after suffering a heart attack. She sat in her car for almost a whole month waiting for someone to find her. Why? Because she lived in her car and that gym parking lot was her home. She would use the gym to shower and use the restroom.

She didn’t have enough money to get her own place and my heart broke because all she did was give and give. Never once did she complain. But behind that smile and "good morning, darling" lived a whole different person. A woman struggling and working eight hours shifts for six days for a company that didn’t even bother helping with flower arrangements.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

“My background intrigues people. I have this immigrant story,” she said. “I was born in Nigeria and my family is from Ethiopia. I have this perspective of how do I enjoy this new life in America in the context of looking around and feeling like everyone is kind of spoiled, including myself, compared to how I grew up.

“I’d started sharing stories on stage, mostly the set up/punch line theme of a joke, about what growing up was like and from my perspective as a parent dealing with parents who are African immigrants, for example, and that seemed to get a lot of laughs and people enjoyed them.”

There are more than 100,000 Ethiopian migrants in Lebanon working under the kafala sponsorship system, which binds them to one employer. The kafala system applies across the Arab world and is highly criticized by human rights group for exploiting workers and denying them the ability to travel or change jobs. Under the kafala system an employer sometimes holds the worker’s passport, residency and work permits even though the Ministry of Labor states migrants have the right to keep their passport and all legal papers.

Monday, February 5, 2018

The 27-year-old stopped the clock in 3:57.45 in front of a vociferous sell-out crowd of 4,500 at the Messe Halle Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe Exhibition Centre), just 2.28 seconds short of the 3:55.17 world indoor record time which she set at same meeting in 2014.

Dibaba‘s time ranks as the second fastest indoor 1500m time in history. She also clocked 4:00.13 in Karlsruhe in 2012, which is now the 10th fastest run of all-time.

Friday, February 2, 2018

He works right now as a social worker but has plans to open a restaurant in Willits or Ukiah eventually. Unfortunately, he does not have the money yet to open his restaurant on his own. Heyi is considering cheaper options like a food truck but is on the lookout for other possibilities. He says he is open to partnering with other people in the community and working towards opening a business with others. Until then, Heyi goes to Farmers Markets in Ukiah, Willits, and even as far as Fort Bragg every weekend to sell his food.

Eden Alene, 17, of Jerusalem, an Israel native who was raised by her Orthodox Jewish single mother, began sobbing and hugging her professional mentor Ivry Lider when she was announced the winner of the competition. As the winner of “X-Factor,” she gets a recording contract.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Kasanash Yashna, who made her way from Ethiopia to Israel when she was a teenager, and has yet to be granted Israeli citizenship, is terrified about what her future has in store for her after learning that she would be included in Israel’s mass deportation policy of African migrants.

In November last year, she was notified by the Population and Immigration Authority that she had 14 days to leave Israel.